August 18, 2010

Marfa Lights of Southwest Texas

As of mid-2010, there seemed to be little to connect the mysterious Marfa Lights of Texas with the mysterious sightings of apparent living pterosaurs in Texas. I know of many "ghost light" legends and eyewitness accounts in various parts of the United States; many of those I attribute to the Min Min phenomenon: bioluminescent barn owls, according to the researcher Fred Silcock of Australia. But Marfa Lights are different.

Before dismissing accounts of strange flying lights in Texas, consider what has been written:

Why consider that American “ghost lights” relate to live pterosaurs? Consider the ropen light of Papua New Guinea. From them we can learn that at least some living pterosaurs are bioluminescent, in particular the apparent Rhamphorhynchoids of the Southwest Pacific. Now consider how many strange lights are reported across the United States: North Carolina (Brown Mountain Light), South Carolina (Bingham Lights), Arkansas (Dover Lights), Washington state (Yakima Lights)–those are only a sample. Strange lights have appeared across the United States for decades or centuries; apparent pterosaurs have also appeared across the United States for decades or centuries.

James Bunnell, author of . . . Hunting Marfa Lights, has long assumed that they are caused by some kind of energy that may relate to the geology of the area. The problem with that approach is the apparent intelligent behavior of the lights.

. . . Marfa Lights might appear for one night or two nights in a row, then leave, not to came back for several weeks or so; it is the coming back that is critical: Aliens that fly over bushes near Marfa, Texas, and returning every few weeks, would be anything but intelligent; there is nothing much there but bushes.

With American ghost lights, intriguing possibilities arise. What about the Hornet Light of Missouri or the Gurdon Light of Arkansas or the Chapel Hill Light of Tennessee? Are they from pterosaurs or from barn owls? The behavior of those lights gives us a clue: The three lights appear to behave like hunting barn owls. Don’t bother hunting for strange lights in those three areas if your interest is only in modern pterosaurs or in headless ghosts who search for their missing heads.

But with the Marfa Lights of Southern Texas, well, that is another story, and apparently a nonfiction one. Those lights behave like intelligent glowing flying creatures that are hunting bats. Could not barn owls learn to catch bats? Perhaps they might, but it would be a remarkable adaptation. The big problem with a barn owl interpretation of the Marfa Lights, however, is in the behavior of those lights. Their complex dance routine flies in the face of barn owl intelligence . . .